No funds but Nagpur civic body panel clears Rs 373cr worth works

NAGPUR: It took less than half an hour for the Nagpur Municipal Corporation standing committee to pass proposals worth 373.07 crore for various development works at its meeting on Thursday. Sources expressed surprise at the haste with which the committee acted despite NMC’s poor financial condition.

Civic administration had tabled eight proposals including appointment of project management consultant for smart city project, issuing of work orders for 324.03 crore cement road works, assigning private agency for door-to-door survey of properties and extension to private firm maintaining city’s street lights. The standing committee approved all the projects.

Even though committee has okayed the proposals, the works are likely to remain a non-starter due to paucity of funds. The committee could have considered these proposal when there was sufficient money in NMC kitty, said a senior official from NMC’s accounts department.

Standing committee chairman Ramesh Shingare told TOI all works will be started soon but did not give a direct reply how the civic body would arrange for the finances. The funds for cement road project would also come from NIT and state government, he said. Shingare explained the central government had already sanctioned 2 crore to the NMC for appointing a project management consultant for helping the civic body participate in the national-level smart city contest.

Administration had also tabled a proposal to appoint private firms to provide technical assistance for creation of a comprehensive computerized property database for NMC to support assessment and consolidation of all municipal revenues.

Superintending engineer S Hastak said the work would be carried out in two components. First will be to carry-out design and implementation of assessment and consolidation of municipal revenues’ using software and setting up of centralized control room and server room. The second will cover door-to-door survey of property assessment. Both will help civic body increase its property tax reven. The time for completing both is 18 months. NMC will also appoint a project management consultant to monitor them.

The panel also gave its nod to various proposals including widening of road between Abhyankar Nagar and Madhav Nagar and extension to contractor maintaining city’s streetlights for seven more days.